sang the quartette, "The Brook," with which everyone was delighted.
Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:


At nighttime in the moon's fair glow
How sweet, as fancies wander free,
To feel that in this world there's one
Who still is thinking but of thee!

That while her fingers touch the harp
Wafting sweet music music the lea,
It is for thee thus swells her heart,
Sighing its message out to thee...

A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,
But oh! till then I cannot live!...


He had not finished the last verse before the young people began
to get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and
the coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.


Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had engaged
him, as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political
conversation in which several others joined but which bored Pierre.
When the music began Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre
said, laughing and blushing:

"Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers."